He has been depicted as a terrorist straight out of the mould of a character from a Tom Clancy novel, a rogue responsible for the death of dozens of innocent Filipinos and a key member of the Southeast Asian-based extremist group, the Jemaah Islamiya.

The daring escape of Fathur Rohman Al Ghozi, along with two other fellow militants last Monday from a detention cell inside the police headquarters in busy Metro Manila has prompted the biggest ever manhunt in Philippine's history and a P10 million ($188,679) prize for his capture – the biggest so far put up for a dissident by the government.

Little has been known about Al Ghozi before his capture more than a year ago except that his father was a member of the Indonesian dissident group Komando Jihad, that he graduated from Pondok Ngruki, an Islamic school in Indonesia founded by Malaysian cleric and suspected Jumaah Islamiya chieftain Abu Bakr Baasyir, before studying in Pakistan in 1989.

But by all indications shown by police and military intelligence files on the 31-year-old Indonesian, Al Ghozi would be better off in prison to escape the wrath of his colleagues in Jemaah Islamiya.

His arrest led to a windfall of information that enabled authorities in Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore to arrest suspected Jemaah Islamiya members in their respective countries.

Since his capture in early January 2002, information provided by Al Ghozi to intelligence interrogators have also resulted in the seizure of 1,100 kgs of high explosives and several high-powered firearms.

The 17 high-powered rifles, 50 boxes of TNT, detonating cords and detonators were seized from his house in southern General Santos City on January 16, seven days after he was apprehended by military and police intelligence in Manila's Quiapo district.

He said the explosives were about to be transported to Singapore to bomb American interests there when it was seized by authorities. A police intelligence dozier on Al Ghozi which Gulf News obtained, says Al Ghozi is married to a Malaysian national whose residence was raided by Malaysian authorities in connection with the arrest of 13 Malaysian and 15 Singaporean nationals suspected to be members of an Al Qaida cell in Southeast Asia sometime April last year.

A report by the Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (Isafp) says his admission of his involvement in the bombings in Metro Manila on December 30, 2000 that killed 22 civilians, led to the arrest last May of Muklis Yunos, allegedly a bomb expert trained by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

The December 30, 2000 bombing was supposedly the first major Jamaah Islamiya operation in the Philippines. Muklis and Al Ghozi were reportedly classmates at the training facilities of Al Qaida in Afghanistan. "They allegedly both know about demolition and anthrax application in biochemical warfare," an intelligence report prepared by Senior Supt. Rodolfo Mendoza Jr., former chief of the Philippine National Police intelligence branch, said.

Under interrogation, Al Ghozi admitted that he gave money to a group headed by Muklis to support their needs in carrying out the December 30, 2000 bombing of five targets in Metro Manila, namely the Light Rail Transit (LRT), an abandoned petrol farm in suburban Makati City, a fuel dump at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport, a passenger bus in Quezon City and a park just across the street from the U.S. Embassy in the capital.

The bombs exploded almost simultaneously, a pattern, which local intelligence officials said, is very similar to the October 2002 bombing in Bali, Indonesia – another attack which had been attributed to the Jamaah Islamiya.